White
by blackcatt19
Summary: "It's wrong. You're not sure how you got here, but you know that it's not where you're supposed to be. The walls are white and blank and it's all wrong." Robin-centric. Brainwashing and mental asylums. One shot. Companion one-shot to 'Black'.


It's wrong.

You're not sure how you got here, but you know that's it's not where you're supposed to be. The walls are white and blank and the door locks from the outside.

(Your room is supposed to be blue, because Bruce let you paint it three years ago. Your room is supposed to have posters of the Flash, and Superman, and the Flying Grayson's, and, of course, Batman, all over the walls. Your room is supposed to have a lock on the inside because Alfred says growing boys need their privacy, even though everyone in the house could pick the lock in under three seconds.)

The bed is hard and thin and bolted to the floor. The room is cold. You don't know why you're here, even though you try so hard to remember.

(The last thing you can think of was heading home after a meeting with the team. You remember that Alfred was going to make pot roast for dinner.)

People come in but you can't focus on them. They shake you. You react. You're on the floor with three big men in white clothes pinning you down. Your knuckles hurt.

(You wonder why everything in this place is white.)

They put you in a white jacket that wraps your arms around yourself. They put things in your mouth and your head feels fuzzy and you can't think straight and the world (it's so white) is spinning around you as if you are somersaulting but you know you're not.

(Bruce taught you once how to fight being drugged, but your head is so messed up you can't remember his voice.)

The men in white drag you out of the white room into a white hallway. You try to remember where you are taken but the world rotates the wrong way and your stomach is trying to relocate to your head.

(You don't remember what you are supposed to do in a situation like this but you should, you should!)

The man in the white lab coat sits across from you with a white clipboard. He asks you who you are and you tell him. He tells you that you are confused. That the person you think you are is a lie.

(You know that he's the one lying, but when you tell him he just writes more notes and shakes his head sadly.)

A woman comes in to visit you. They let you out of the white jacket and you can move but they still make you take the pills and your head is filled with cotton. The woman says she's your mother, that you're sick and they are going to help you get better. You tell her that your parents are dead, that you don't know her.

(Your heart aches when she starts crying because somewhere in the back of your mind you wonder what would be so bad about having a mother again.)

The shrink in the white lab coat tells you that you are delusional. You try to tell him that he's wrong. You try to show him. You try to do your quadruple somersault.

(You land on your back and it hurts, but not as much as your pride and your heart. You wonder if what they're telling you is true.)

You lose track of time. Days go by in a haze of the drugs that keep getting shoved down your throat. You can feel your ribs through the jacket.

(You know you should eat what they give you, but you already live in the white room, on the white bed, in the white jacket, and you're afraid that if you eat the white food too, you'll become just another white ghost in this white place.)

You can feel yourself slipping and that scares you more than anything. You can't remember their faces, voices. Your family is sliding away and no matter how hard you try, they're falling through your fingers.

(One day you wake up and you don't remember Bruce's face.)

You start to believe them. You ask the shrink who you really are. The woman comes back and cries and hugs you and you think maybe this will be okay, to give in, to give up.

(In the back of your mind you hate yourself because you know you should have fought harder.)

You ask when they will let you out. You tell them what they want to hear. You take the pills and they don't have to force you. They don't put you in the jacket anymore. You look down at your hands and you know that now you're just another white ghost and you wonder why you fought so hard if it was just going to happen anyway.

(There's a voice inside you, a gruff growl, that snaps at you that you're wrong, that you need to fight, have to fight, but you can't remember who the voice belongs to.)

They tell you that you're doing well. The woman visits more, brings a man who says he's your father, but he's short and blond and wiry and you feel like that's wrong, that he should be tall, dark, strong. You don't know why because you barely remember anything before the white and you can't make your thoughts go straight.

(You don't know what your father is supposed to look like, but the gruff voice is yelling at you. You don't understand what it's saying anymore.)

It's wrong.

They lock you back in the jacket and shove pills down your throat, more than ever before. They put a padlock on your room in the inside and you hear them slide something big over the door. There are screams in the halls. Yelling. Explosions. Something about the sounds is familiar and you feel like you should go, help, do something to fix it.

(You remind yourself you are just a normal boy and that you can't do anything about yelling and explosions.)

There is someone at your door. The screaming is right there, and there is a gruff, angry voice outside slamming something into it. You can see the dents forming in the door, like someone really strong is punching it.

(You remember that no one is that strong because superheroes don't actually exist.)

The room is going fuzzy at the edges and you are so, so tired, and the door is flying off its hinges but your eyes are closing and you can't bring yourself to care.

(Somewhere deep in your mind you know something is really, really wrong because you can't move at all and you aren't thinking straight and your breathing is so, so slow, even though your heart is pounding in your ears.)

Someone picks you up off the white bed and carries you through the white hallways and away from the white world. You can feel them cut the white jacket off of you, feel them smack you lightly on your cheek. You can hear them talking to you but your ears aren't working and you can't really understand them.

(You wonder what he's saying, in his deep gruff voice, because he sounds really scared and you wonder why.)

He's carrying you now, and you can feel his strong arms wrapped around your thin, white ghost body and there's something wet falling on your face that smells salty.

(You think you can hear him for a moment, but you don't know why he's telling you to hold on because he's the one holding on to you.)

You drag your eyes open and there's a man in black armor above you and he's tall and dark and strong and you think, oh, _this _is what your dad looks like. Your eyes close again and everything feel dark and safe and quiet and you're so tired…

("Hold on, Dick, please hold on.")

* * *

A/N: Yup. Hope you weren't too confused. It's supposed to get less structured and more jumbled as Robin's kind of descending into the crazy, so please don't yell at me for my sentence structure there toward the end. Hope you enjoyed.

EDIT (3-9-13) Ya'll asked for it. The companion story is now up.


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